f cavalry; for its operations in the Crimea and in
Italy were insignificant. The art of warfare had, meanwhile, in many
respects, become revolutionized by the introduction of rifled arms.
Military men waited, therefore, with interest, the experience of the war
in this country, to judge from it as to the part cavalry was to perform
in future warfare. That experience has shown that the day in which
cavalry can successfully charge squares of infantry has passed. When the
smooth-bore muskets alone were used by infantry, cavalry could be formed
in masses for charging at a distance of five hundred yards; now the
formations must be made at the distance of nearly a mile, and that
intervening space must be passed at speed under the constant fire of
cannon and rifles; when the squares are reached, the horses are
frightened and blown, the ranks have been disordered by the
impossibility of preserving a correct front during such a length of time
at rapid speed, and by the loss of men; the charge breaks weakly on the
wall of bayonets, and retires baffled. Infantry, before it learns its
own strength and the difficulty of forcing a horse against a bayonet--or
rather to trample down a man--has an absurd and unfounded fear of
cavalry. This feeling was in part the cause of the panic among our
troops at Bull Run--so much had been said about the Black Horse troop of
the rebels. The Waterloo achievements of the French were then thought
possible of repetition. Now adays it is hardly probable that the veteran
infantry of either army would take the trouble to form squares to resist
cavalry, but would expect to rout it by firing in line. Neither party in
our war has been able to make its mounted forces effective in a general
battle. Nothing has occurred to parallel, upon the battle field, those
exploits of the cavalry--French, Prussian, and English--in the great
wars of the last century, extending to Waterloo.

The enthusiastic admirers of cavalry still maintain that it is possible
to repeat those exploits, even in face of the improved firearms now in
use. All that is necessary, they say, is to have the cavalry
sufficiently drilled. The ground to be crossed under a positively
dangerous fire is only five hundred or six hundred yards, and once
taught to continue the charge through the bullets for this distance, and
then to throw themselves on the bayonets, horsemen will now, as
heretofore, break the lines of infantry. All very true, _if_ cavalry to